You have probably been told not to be attached to the outcome when making choices in your life. Easier said than done. But decision making, as in boxing, requires balance – we should neither balk and stumble backward nor lunge forward, lest in our eagerness to be right we fall flat on our face. And if we try to force our way in instead of waiting for an opening, life will clobber us but good! Balance means keeping your weight over your feet, to let your body find its place in the world, flowing into it as water flows into the ocean.

Balance of being means relinquishing the frenzied desire to be right. It is letting the truth come to you. When the waters of the mind are still, they become clear. Rather than seeking knowledge, we seek clarity, for knowledge is constantly changing, but clarity is eternally the same. Knowledge, because it is endless, presents us with a dizzying array of endless choices, but clarity makes the path set before us obvious. Knowledge is mental; clarity is intuitive.

We tend to seek divine guidance in the form of answers, as though right action will come through the acquisition of knowledge. Therefore, we endlessly search for facts, as though they will lead us to better choices, when in reality facts more often lead us away from truth and into confusion. Truth is not the aggregation of facts; it does not come through knowledge. Truth comes by knowing, and that is one of the most difficult things for the mind to comprehend.

Somehow, we have come to believe that “to know” means to know something – knowing without an object of knowing seems…well, counterintuitive. This is ironical, maybe even paradoxical. It is ironical in the sense that we have conflated the verb and the noun as if they mean the same thing – to know and knowledge –when they do not.

Knowing is akin to confidence, which is as important in one’s spiritual life as it is in the world. Confidence creates a locus for being – it establishes a stillpoint, an eye (I) of calm in the midst of the swirl of “facts”. And because the word confidence is normally used to describe a mind in possession of truth, we find it difficult to have confidence unless it is based upon what we “see.” Confidence without knowledge seems disingenuous, even fraudulent, as in “con (confidence) men.” Success, whether spiritual or material, depends upon acquiring inside information, according to this model. But confidence in the spiritual sense is tapping into the knowing of God, to what actually is, which can most rightly be described as Being itself. To come in touch with that Being and the influx of confidence it provides, even in the face of a complete lack of evidence, is what religionists call “faith,” though that word too has been conflated with the word “belief.” Faith is deeper than mere belief. Belief is dependent upon knowledge; faith is dependent upon knowing.

Divine guidance comes to us when we are in a clear state of mind. It does not have to come in the form of an “answer,” which is mental; it is most powerful when it comes as a “knowing,” a deep confidence in the presence and power of God acting in and through our lives. Since most of our problems come as a result of our thinking, of being in our head and not in our heart, it stands to reason that our problems will disappear when we get inwardly quiet, when we stop the chatter and the arguing, and find the stillpoint of our Being.

“Be still and know that I am God.”